The Herald-News Passaic, New Jersey Sunday, May 19, 1985 - Page 68
Bobby Fischer Remembered
“Living in New York, I talk to chess players, now and then, who had met with Bobby Fischer firsthand. And they usually have a story to tell.
Richard Frey, an amateur chess player and computer systems analyst, recalls an event in the mid 1960s.
“I was at the Flea House, a place on 42nd Street, where you played chess at an hourly fee. It had the most interesting collection of chess players, all in a room, that the world has ever known,” he said. “A vast number of European emigres gathered there, speaking a variety of languages, and playing anywhere from very weak to very strong chess.”
Fischer, an occasional visitor, sat down one day to play a series of five-minute games with a Flea House character, known as Sam the Rabbi, at queen odds.
“They were playing for $5 a game, which was a lot of money in those days,” Frey said. “Thy played game after game. After each game, the pieces would be set up instantly. Fischer was in a hurry, you know. Of course, he won all or most of the games.
“A couple of months later, I observed Fischer talking at a chessboard with Asa Hoffman, a chess master, who hustled games at the Flea House.
“He told Asa about the session with Sam. Fischer kept setting up position after position from the games, running through the moves at lightning speed and saying: ‘We got to this position and Sam was afraid of this. But instead I had this. Ha, ha, ha!’”
“I thought the demonstration was a mark of an extraordinary memory,” Frey said. “The games must have been of zero theoretical interest to him.
“By the way, I never saw anyone else given a queen to Sam the Rabbi.”
Below is a Fischer loss against the Dutch former world champion, Max Euwe. The game was played at the Manhattan Chess Club in New York in 1957, when Fischer was 14.
